NOVEL WEB Chapter 12: What is Power?
“Since this isn’t an official occurrence, please allow me to be blunt, Elder Wei: Why are you doing… all the things you are doing?”
Lan Shi’s gaze was piercing and inquisitive, like that of a scholar encountering a phenomenon that seemed to be incompatible with their understanding of the world.
Liu Wei took a deep, audible breath.
“That is a very loaded question, Elder Lan Shi. Seeing as that is partly the reason, I asked all of you for this meeting, I shall answer it in full. It is going to be quite the long explanation though, if you can excuse that.”
“Please take all the time you would like. We are just glad you are willing to entertain this at all.” Ma Rong gave him a friendly smile and a nod.
“Then I would like to start with a bit of a philosophical question. It might seem at most tangentially related, but by the end of this, I assure you I will tie this back into the original question.”
This statement got them to raise some eyebrows. They were already accustomed to his less-than straightforward style of approaching topics from the way he had conducted himself during the council meeting, but this was nonetheless something new. Elder Rong was the once again the one to answer.
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Alright. Could each of you please tell me, what your definition of power is?”
“Our definition of power? What has that… Actually, whatever. Power is the ability to hurt others”
“I would add that it is also the ability to protect oneself from harm.”
The answers that Lan Shi and Meng Hui gave respectively fit both of them perfectly. They also proved that the average cultivator didn’t much concern themselves with purely philosophical questions of definition. After all, the time that they could spend thinking about something like that, they could also spend cultivating.
He himself had only started asking himself those questions after he had lost his ability to do so. He trusted that the others would also be able to come up with a much better definition given some time. Guang Lai was the next to speak up:
“I agree with both of you, but I think power is more than that. It is hard to put in words, it’s like… something that can take many shapes, only one of which is how strong one person is.”
“I think what you are struggling to put in words is that power is a complex construct made up of a multitude of factors such as personal strength, tactical intelligence and social bonds.”
As expected, Ma Rong’s definition was much deeper and broader, though it wasn’t exactly what Liu Wei was working towards. Which was fortunate, as it gave him the opportunity to have the last word.
“Now, none of these definitions are false by any means. They are not, how I would define power though. In my opinion, the broadest and simultaneously most precise definition is as follows: Power is any individual’s or any group’s ability to enact or enforce change upon the world or to prevent change from being enacted upon it. The most powerful entity would therefore be the entity with the greatest ability to enact or prevent change. If you compare the definitions brought forward by you, I believe you will find that all of them can be assimilated into this definition without changing it.”
“That is true.” Ma Rong said after a brief pause, sounding genuinely interested.
Without waiting for the other elders’ reactions, Liu Wei continued:
“Now, as Elder Ma Rong pointed out previously, there are many kinds of power. As such, there are even more ways to accumulating it. One of them, in fact one of the best ones, as the distribution of power all throughout our society shows us, is to increase one’s personal strength by cultivating. Of course, power can simultaneously also be used to help this pursuit, for example by assisting one in gaining resources for their cultivation.”
Liu Wei briefly paused, looking around to gauge the reactions of his audience. All of them were listening intensely, only Lan Shi showing slight signs of impatience.
“Now, there is another property of power, or rather of those who hold it that is worth discussing. Namely, the motivation to use it.
Take someone who has a near infinite ability to enact or prevent change. Let’s further say that they have no motivation at all to ever do either of these things to the point where it is assured that they will never, ever do anything of either, no matter the state the world might take. Can we truly say that they even have any power at all? I mean, if there is no possibility of them ever enacting any change, is it right to say they could do so?
What I am trying to get at is a central property of power, which is that it needs a motivation to matter.
I call this motivation meaning. This meaning can be anything, even just to survive, and every human possesses it to some extent. The important thing is that it needs to be big enough to encompass the power one holds, otherwise part of that power is irrelevant. Just surviving in any way isn’t enough meaning for, say for example a king at the height of his power.”
Liu Wei made another pause in his speech, to give the elders the time to think through his reasoning. When he was sure everyone was caught up, he continued:
“Cultivation, as we all know, has no clearly defined upper limit, at least none that has yet been found. Cultivators may at some point be outrun by time as they fail to advance their cultivation quick enough to expand their lifespans further, but that is simply a failure at the personal level.
Cultivating to gain power and using that power to advance one’s cultivation is essentially an infinite cycle of meaning. It is my personal belief that it is this cycle that is responsible for the lack of care that many cultivators hold towards morality, justice or a ‘good’ world. They never need to search for any meaning besides cultivation.”
That was quite the claim he was making, but it was truly what he had come to believe. While he had no way to prove it, it made the most sense when trying to explain the average cultivator’s behavior. Most importantly, it served to explain why he himself had accepted the way the current sect’s system was for so long.
“That is an interesting thesis, I have to admit. I have to question you though, Elder Wei: Couldn’t you extrapolate this reasoning to most if not all kind of powers?”
“You are not wrong, Elder Rong. At least from my limited knowledge of mortal politics, this seems to hold true to a certain extend. Using power to accumulate more power, thereby lifting power from its actual identity of a means to an end to the end in itself is certainly not limited to the world of cultivation. That is beside the point though.
I promised at the beginning, that I would tie this discussion back into the reason for my actions, so let me do exactly that. Alongside my last breakthrough, I have completely and utterly lost the ability to advance my cultivation.”
This revelation plunged the room into a deep silence that nobody dared to break.
As the full implications of what he had just told them began to sink in on the other elders, remained perfectly still, only slight eye movements indicating that they were even alive.
Not only was this basically completely unheard of for cultivators in the Dao Contemplation Realm, it was also something that most cultivators would probably slaughter entire villages to keep secret. It was a vulnerability that was nearly unthinkable to simply expose in front others.
Liu Wei though, believed it necessary. Not only would opening up about this make the process of building trust towards them a lot easier, it would also make planning a lot easier, as his new allies could more accurately account for his strengths and weaknesses.
The first one to break the silence was once again Ma Rong. He spoke slowly and carefully, keeping his eyes on Liu Wei’s reactions.
“What you are saying is, that you yourself were trapped in this proposed cycle of meaning. You then lost your ability to cultivate, meaning you were not able to continue it.”
“Exactly. Having lost this central piece of who I am as a person, I started pondering about the way I would move forward. This culminated it me confronting my moral understanding of the world and finding it to be lacking. I have since arrived at the conclusion that not only was the way I personally acted wrong, so is the entirety of the system which I am part of.”
“I don’t want to cast doubt upon what you are telling us, but I have never heard of someone in the Dao Contemplation Realm completely losing their ability to cultivate.” Lan Shi interjected.
“Neither have I, but I challenge you to explain the actions that I have taken since my breakthrough in any other way.”
Getting them to fully believe him was not something he would be able to accomplish in a day, but he didn’t need to. For now, he only needed it to be the most believable explanation for his actions, since they would benefit them and their cause either way.
“Let’s put the matter of whether we believe everything you just told us aside, why have you asked to meet with us in the first place? I doubt you simply wanted to sate our curiosity.”
Liu Wei allowed a slight smile to crest his lips.
“To make a long story short: I want to join your cause in changing this sect.”